We've Got the Power

A lot of times, when I read a bible passage, I blow through it as if I'm at a buffet.  I move right along, looking for the good stuff that tastes best: Morsels of the Word that encourage me, inspire me, comfort me - whatever it feels like I want at the moment.  I doubt that's a good way to read scripture.  What's missed are the most nutritious parts of the biblical meal.

There's a little appetizer in Ephesians this week that is easily passed over.  It's this:

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. 

Ephesians 1:9-10

Did you catch that?  The "mystery of God's will" is that God is in the process of bringing all things on "heaven and earth... together" under Christ.  In other words, that's where everything is headed.  This world isn't going down the tubes.  It might look that way, but it isn't.  God's bringing heaven and earth together and that means that his recreative power is constantly being released all over the place.  It's kind of funny that we have a hard time seeing that since it goes on all around us and we take it for granted.  Just this week here in Oregon we had a super nice spell of weather and the blossoms started exploding on the cherry and plum trees.  Grass began to grow.  Leaves poked out of dead looking tree branches.  "That's just Spring," we say.  It's also part of the regeneration and recreation that God builds into nature. It's like he's tapping us on the shoulder and saying, "See? Heaven and earth are joining.  All things will become new."  Paul says the Spirit of God is the beginning of our own regeneration - part of heaven implanted into you and me, and yet there's more to come.

Back in Ephesians, after Paul points to this unification of heaven and earth, he prays that the "eyes of (our) heart may be enlightened."  Hmm.  That's different. Picture your heart with little plastic goggly eyes peering out between your ribs.  What are the "eyes of our heart?"

This week I'm finishing up our short series of messages on prayer by looking at this prayer of Paul's.  What strikes me most as we've studied some key prayers in the New Testament is how different they are than the way I normally pray.  I guess that shouldn't be so surprising - I'm no Paul or Jesus!  Yet their prayers are dramatically different than what most of us pray.  Part of that difference is due to them praying for many people, not just for an individual or a time constrained situation.  But their prayers are also different because they think differently; they have a larger perspective and a bigger view of what's going on around them.  In other words, it seems that reality is so much more real then mine.  The substance of Paul's prayer and what it means for our lives today is what we'll explore in the sermon.
- Curtis

Soul Surgery (& Prayer)

This week we're starting a three week series of messages looking at prayer.  I'll just be straight-up here and confess that prayer has never come easy for me.  That's not to say that I neglect talking to God, which I do quite often through the course of the day.  But prayer is not something that comes easily to me like breathing, walking or craving a chocolate chip cookie.  Perhaps I have spiritual ADHD.  Prayer often feels like more effort than it's supposed to be.   The father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, supposedly said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours (of each day) in prayer."  I can't really imagine that kind of daily prayer focus.  When I pray for more than about 20 minutes, I get irritated, bored, and doubtful.  I start thinking, right in the middle of talking to the Almighty Creator of Everything, "I've got things to do.  Gotta run!"  That's not what you want your pastor saying about prayer, is it?  


I suspect that there are a lot of other followers of Jesus who are like me.  Charles Spurgeon, an English Baptist preacher in the mid and late 1800's, preached 130 sermons about prayer.  Is it possible that Spurgeon preached about prayer so often because he knew it's hard for the average person to pray?  I long to be someone who can relate to/with God like Moses in Exodus 33,  "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend."  How great would that be?  


The more I think and even (gasp) pray about my prayer problem, the more I've come to realize that it is my misunderstanding of prayer that's the real trouble.  Even though I know better, I still tend to pray as if it's all about me telling God what I think he should be doing.  I may couch my prayers in a respectful formula (ie, the old ACTS prayer recipe . . . A=Adoration, C=Confession, T-Thanksgiving, S=Supplication - ah! At last supplication where I get to what I want!), but the truth is, I see prayer as all about me.  That, I fear, is the real trouble with my prayer life.  And so that's part of the reason I decided to preach on the Lord's Prayer this week (on the left side of this blog you can see the other sermons coming up).   I figure Jesus must know how to do this prayer thing pretty well, so that when he teaches us to pray he probably knows what he's talking about.  I like how straight forward he is about prayer and that he says, "...don't babble like the pagans because it's really annoying to my Father..." (my paraphrase, but that's actually what Jesus says). 


In worship this week we will unpack this most amazing prayer and try to tear off most of our preconceptions and misconceptions, and get a clear view of what Jesus is teaching.  One peculiarly fascinating possibility is that Jesus' prayer had a lot to do with the Hebrew Exodus story as the Jews were delivered from Egypt.  Could the Lord's Prayer be a later development of praying through our own deliverance from the things that enslave us?  That's one possibility we might explore.  
- Curtis